The Persistence of Memory
by Gyaku no Sekai
Summary: "And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you." ― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars In which Steve is not Captain America, but he and Bucky come back to each other anyway.
1. Enigmatic Soul

The asset didn't know where he was. He'd been injured on a mission, lost too much blood, and then moved on autopilot through the shadows of the city to this tiny apartment somewhere in Brooklyn. Somewhere. He had-

Everything was in its place, even the messy parts. (How did he know that?) All of it was exactly where it was supposed to be, but it seemed – too new. Too modern. (Why did he think that?)

Footsteps and the rattle of plastic had him pointing the gun at the blond teen – almost a young adult – who emerged from the lone bedroom. He was wearing shorts and a Howling Commandos shirt, large enough that it sagged off one creamy shoulder, and he was yawning, rubbing one eye, an enormous first aid kit tucked under one arm. "Mornin', Bucky," he said sleepily, heaving the kit onto the table and popping it open.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" The words were out of his mouth before he stopped to consider them.

The boy just blinked, then smiled sadly. "You are," he said, "You're Bucky – James Buchanan Barnes. Although I guess that answers the question of whether or not they wiped you again. I'm Steve, Steve Rogers. Now, where are you injured?"

The asset unbuckled his back holster and dropped it into one of the chairs, then removed the tac-vest and wicking shirt underneath. The shot through his side had found a narrow join in the Kevlar and punched through, but it was lucky in other ways – no vital organs hit, no veins or arteries nicked. But it happened early on in the mission, and he had lost a lot of blood since then. Steve seemed to agree, and whipped out the disinfectant.

The asset noticed the kit had anesthetics, and also noticed that he wasn't offered any. That was how he preferred it – nothing to compromise his body, blur his senses – but that begged the question. "How many times have I come here?"

"This makes eleven," said Steve (still small but nowhere near as sickly – _why did he think that_ ), just plugging the entry would before circling around him to check on the exit.

The asset would have protested having the teen behind him, even though he _was_ just a teen, if he hadn't noticed a narrow but full length mirror that had been hung on the wall to let him see Steve as he worked out of direct view. It wasn't the only one; there were other mirrors on every wall and in strategic corners – small ones, but enough.

He _had_ been here before.

Steve finished with his back in short order and moved back around to his front. The asset felt like instead of holding it up above the boy's head as he worked, he should be lowering his right arm, wrapping it around Steve's shoulders in a show of camaraderie. (Why? Why is that? He knew this _boy_ better than ten visits should warrant.)

He didn't. He lifted both arms, and let Steve walk circles around him, gauze wrapping around his torso to hold the sterile dressings in place. When he was done, Steve packed up the first aid kit, set it on the floor, and then headed into the tiny kitchenette, making them both sandwiches from the bread on the counter and the meat and cheese in the refrigerator, triple for the asset.

He didn't check for poison – sloppy, incredibly sloppy, but he had watched Steve make the meal and the teen didn't seem keen on poisoning himself, too. So the asset ate. When they were done, Steve put the plates in the sink, picked up the kit, and said, "Come on. I'll set up the bed for you. Even with the greasepaint, you look like you could use at least a few hours of sleep."

The asset picked up his gear and followed in silence.

His bed was a couch that unfolded into a bunk bed. When he toed off his shoes and laid out on the bottom bunk, he saw that the underside of the top bunk and the support that held it up were reinforced steel, and there was a narrow gap between the support and the wall, a gap that let him see out into the rest of the apartment through the open bedroom door – a gap just wide enough for the muzzle of a gun.

He really had been here before.

Steve stowed the first aid kit under his own bed, then passed the asset a blanket and a pillow. Both were familiar. So was the "Good night, Bucky," from the other bed.

So was the "Good night, Stevie," that left him.

So was the smile in the dark.


	2. New Beginnings

Bucky was gone by morning, as he always was, but the bunk bed had been folded back into a couch, the blanket folded neatly atop the pillow.

In a way, Steve was grateful. He didn't have to wake up and see the ugly red snarl floating around and through Bucky's head. He wanted to smooth it out to the soothing blue of the rest of his body (where he wasn't injured), but he still hadn't learned how to do it without taking that damage into himself. 'Wound Transference,' the Professor called it, coupled with 'Diagnosis'; to his sight, everyone had an ambient energy field made of ribbons of light: blue and smooth for healthy, red and snarled for physical injury or mental illness, and green and sluggish for disease.

He was learning, same as everyone at the Professor's school, but not fast enough for his tastes. Not fast enough to save his friend from whoever had him and _programmed_ him to kill like a _machine_ , from whoever sent him out on missions that ended up with him climbing through the window of their old apartment at 2:30 in the morning with blood coming from _somewhere_ , from whoever kept wiping his memory and making him ask, "Who the hell is Bucky?" It killed him inside, every time it happened – but Bucky kept finding his way back home. That gave him hope, even just a tiny sliver of it.

Once Steve finished his breakfast, he raced to the nearest pharmacy to stock up on everything he thought Bucky might need while he was away at school, on the off chance he dropped by. Mostly gauze, dressings, sutures, and butterfly bandages; everything else was already stocked. He had only come by once before when Steve hadn't been there, though; the teen mutant had left a note and the kit on the table, and come back to find the note and some bandages gone.

Every other time, he had woken in the dead of night, and known with absolute certainty that he wasn't alone, even before seeing Bucky's energy field through the walls.

Steve made sure everything was in its place before packing up all the perishable food and his clothes, and heading off for another semester at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, aka Mutant High. He had a few friends there – Marie, Kitty, Piotr – but some of the others were too… _immature_ for him to really relate to them. He had been almost twenty-eight when he finally succumbed to his body's flaws, which meant that mentally he was in his forties.

He had been eight and thirty-six when Professor X had first approached him and his parents, both of whom worked for StarkTech. While the telepath had initially been surprised to have proof of reincarnation before his eyes, he had quickly accepted it and offered Steve a place at the school. His parents had been overjoyed; fortunately for him, both of them were pro-mutant and were relieved that there was someone out there who could teach Steve how to use his power.

They had also barely blinked when he said he wanted to live in one very specific apartment in Brooklyn, and arranged for him to have it without hesitation – something he was very grateful for, because barely a week after he had moved in and arranged things to his liking, Bucky had shown up on the fire escape, halfway into shock.

He had been overjoyed and devastated all at once.


	3. Heart of Fury

The asset lied to his handlers about where he had been, where he had received treatment for his injury. They believed him; after all, he had never lied to them before, had been programmed not to.

But he had. He had lied about the teen – Steve – before, because otherwise they would have retrieved or executed him long ago – ten visits ago. He had lied because he couldn't let that happen, felt some deep, dark part of him flare into a raging inferno that threatened the whole world at the thought of his handlers even _knowing_ Steve _existed_ , much less laying hands on him.

He couldn't allow it.

He _wouldn't_ allow it.

Steve was not the Mission, so he was not relevant to the Mission Report.

Simple as that.


	4. Pulse of Life

"You encountered the Winter Soldier again, during the break."

"Yes, sir."

"How was he?"

Steve looked at the Professor's feet. "They wiped him again."

"This makes four times then."

"Yes, sir. Eleven visits, four wipes."

The Professor made a note of that in the log. "I find it very curious," he said, "that they keep erasing his memory, and yet he keeps coming back to you. To the apartment you shared. Whether it is muscle memory or instinct or something else, there is a part of him that knows you, a part so integral to his being that they cannot root it out without making him useless to them."

"I thought so, too, but it's nice to hear it from someone else. You think there's hope?"

"There might be. He would never again be the man you knew, but he might recover enough to call himself 'Bucky Barnes' and have it be truth." The telepath wrote a bit more. "Physically, how was he?"

"He had a gunshot wound on his right side, through and through, no organ damage but he'd been bleeding for a while. And his brain – no worse, but no better, either. I did what I could for him. Dr Grey's lessons have helped a lot." It was slow going, very slow going, but he had learned to heal bruises and small cuts without transferring them to himself, and was starting to inch his way up to more severe injuries.

"No worse but no better," the Professor repeated, briefly tapping his pen on the log. His gaze was distant, probably conferring with someone.

The bell rang, and the man dismissed him to his classes. Even though the first week back was always an easy one, he still couldn't afford to miss a single class. He might have been living in the "modern era" for almost fourteen years, but he was _still_ learning new things every day and unlearning old ones, still adapting to new discoveries, new science, new technology.

"Steve!"

Marie and Kitty waived him over; they had saved him a seat next to them. He smiled and darted over to sit next to them, waving to a few others who called out greetings. "How was you break?" he asked as he sat down.

"Good. I called my parents." Marie's southern drawl lengthened her vowels and reminded Steve of one of the few lazy Sundays he had with Bucky.

"And?"

She smiled shyly. "They came up to see me last week. We had to be careful, but I got hugs from everyone anyway."

Both Steve and Kitty beamed. Marie's relationship with _everyone_ was complicated by her mutation, but they were happy to see that her parents wanted to reconnect. Not everyone was so lucky.


	5. World of Dreams

Brain function was supposed to be minimal in cryosleep, but that didn't stop the asset from dreaming sometimes. Usually of mission intel, past missions – some familiar, some forgotten – weapons, gear, training.

Sometimes he dreamed of Steve, but not the Steve he (sometimes) knew. This one was full grown but still small and sickly, more often in bed with an illness than out of it healthy. But that hadn't stopped him from getting into fights in pretty much every alley in the city.

Though he knew them to be true when they came, the memories confused the asset; they seemed to come from before his birth, when he'd come full-fledged from the snow. Sometimes he remembered those early days, too, days before The Chair when he'd been wild and vicious and attacked everyone unwise enough to get close.

Sometimes he remembered The Captain. The Captain hadn't been nearly as important as Steve, but he had been sent to save the asset from certain death.

Sometimes those dreams followed him into the waking world.


End file.
